Confessions: The Private School Murders (27 page)

The sting of a needle going
into my hip snapped me awake. I was on the hard floor of a vehicle, hands still cuffed, a black bag over my head.

“Where am I? What the hell are you—”

The vehicle braked hard, and I was thrown forward, my head slamming into the back of a seat. The cuffs and hood were removed. I tried to get my bearings, but the sunlight nearly blinded me. I must have been out for a while. A pair of grubby hands grabbed me by the arms, the doors opened, and two husky men hustled me out of a white van. I went boneless, trying to make it harder on my captors, but they just dragged me across the asphalt.

“Let go of me!” I shouted. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

Someone stifled a laugh. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could just make out mown grass fronting wide steps up to a Greek-style portico. The building was white stone and fairly grand. I’d never seen it before.

My mind spun as the two thugs hauled me up the steps. Who were they? Why had they grabbed me? Was James okay? How had they found us?

And then the flashes started. James glancing around nervously on Seventy-Fourth Street, like he was afraid he was being followed. The overly familiar train conductor. The cabdriver who hailed
us
. The black car trailing behind the cab from the East Hampton station to a narrow, unlit road.

Someone had followed us all the way from the city. Someone had kidnapped us, two of the wealthiest kids in New York City, and were probably planning on holding us for ransom.

But where were we? And where the hell was James?

A man with thin black hair and a mustache walked over to where I was struggling in the clutches of the thugs. “I’m Tandoori Angel,” I told him, resisting the urge to spit on his polished shoes. “My parents are powerful people, and they’re not going to pay you off. They’re going
to call the head of the FBI. They’ll call the president, and he’ll take their call. If you don’t take me home right now, you’re going to go to prison. For life. Nod your head if you understand.”

Wispy Hair Man smiled and said, “Now, now. You’re upset. But trust me, Tandoori. Your parents know quite well where you are, and they are quite happy about it. Mission accomplished.”

My vision went hazy. My parents had
arranged
this? “Where is James?”

He cocked his head. “I don’t know who you mean.”

I screamed as loudly as I could and tried to pull away from the thumbheads who were gripping my arms. One of them had close-cropped white hair and a flattened nose. He smiled as I thrashed and struggled and used language that I’d never used before. F-bombs fell thickly on the driveway and also on deaf ears.

Nothing worked.

When I was bruised and scraped and heaving with exhaustion, the man with the mustache leaned down to look me in the eye.

“I’m Dr. Narmond. Welcome to Fern Haven, Tandoori,” he said. “I hope you enjoy your stay.”

59

I was taken into an office,
strapped to a chair, and force-fed bitter, horrid-tasting medicine. When I spat it out, my head was tipped back and the medication was poured directly down my throat while I gagged and choked. After that, I got a shot in the arm and passed out.

Later, the weaselly Dr. Narmond sat in a chair across a desk from me. I can’t recall what the office looked like. Not even part of it. I was fixated on Dr. Narmond—his tiny eyes, his stringy hair and mustache, his long-fingered white hands tapping the desk like he was playing piano scales.

Then the interrogation began. And as soon as I heard myself answering his questions, I knew I’d been doped with sodium thiopental, also called truth serum. It’s an
evil drug used on prisoners of war so the interrogators can get information. It’s also used in psychiatric hospitals, to help doctors do exactly the same thing: gather information against their patients’ wills. Bottom line, if you’re on a hypnotic like sodium thiopental, you tell the truth and are perfectly primed to be indoctrinated.

Think of me, dear friend, strapped into a chair, the conscious part of my brain reduced to a perfectly malleable chunk of organic tissue. The real me—feisty, nerdy, analytical, bossy, intellectual, sarcastic—had been smothered. Canceled out. And I didn’t even own enough of my mind to care.

I answered the doctor’s prying questions until he was satisfied.

“Your mind is quite responsive, Tandoori,” he said finally, sounding impressed and a tad gleeful. “I believe you will do well with us and will be much better equipped to be a proper citizen than before your visit.”

I didn’t have enough will to protest, but I had enough in me to hate myself for it.

In the following days, I saw only my keepers. No unkempt insane people, no muttering wanderers or crazed addicts looking to score. There were no gross smells, unless you count the eye-watering aroma of chlorine disinfectant. I didn’t hear screams. It was a very quiet place, this home
for the insane elite. An exclusive and restful stop for the seriously nutty one percent.

I was dressed in white cotton pajamas and white socks and given a slim little room with a slim little bed and an overhead light that was always left on. My cell had barred windows and a locked door with a spy hole. I stayed in my bright box most of the time, forced into a heavy, drugged sleep. It was as if I’d been wrapped in a cocoon of white light and was waiting to be reborn as something less than myself.

At random intervals, probably deliberately random intervals, I was taken out to a little table near a window with a view of a forest glade. I was given a bib and bland white food that could be eaten with a plastic spoon.

My “therapy sessions” with Dr. Narmond were conducted in a medical examination room. He sat on a wheeled stool and rolled around me as he questioned me and flashed lights in my eyes. I sat in a high-backed chair, and a helmet was brought down over my head. I’m fairly certain that the helmet was wired with supersensitive electrodes.

I don’t believe that the point of the therapy was behavior modification. I think the point was information collection. My parents wanted to know everything I knew about James.

Dr. Narmond asked intrusive personal questions that I was compelled by the drugs to answer. I was defenseless. When I was asked about James, I’m certain that somewhere
outside the exam room a neuroimaging machine mapped my brain.

And then there was “treatment.”

I never knew when I would be awakened, or told to put down my spoon, or interrupted as I gazed out at the fern-floored forest. The element of surprise, keeping me in an anxious state of high alert, was part of the treatment.

They kept me scared. And that made me compliant.

“Ready, Tandy?” was the signal that got my blood pumping, my nerves sizzling. And then, ready or not, I was walked between two orderlies to a darkened room. I was placed on a slab. Headphones were clamped over my ears and restraints were tightened across my thighs and chest and forehead.

“Ready, Tandoori? Good girl.”

The slab slid into a short tunnel. A metallic sound bonged, and Dr. Narmond’s amplified voice boomed through headphones, vibrating the bones of my skull. There, in the dark tunnel, those parts of my brain that lit up when I had seditious thoughts were zapped.

I heard tiny
zzzt
sounds as my thoughts about James, my memories of him, every second we’d spent together, were systematically deleted.

Systematic destruction.

I imagine Fern Haven was famous for that.

CONFESSION

It’s so hard for me to talk
about the time I spent at Fern Haven, my friend. But being able to share my greatest fears with someone has helped me already, so I have another confession to make.

While I was there, everything passed in a series of light and dark moments that didn’t belong to me. There was dreamless sleep like a white death. I never wanted to wake up, but it didn’t matter. I was always awakened by a shot of adrenaline in my hip.

Then came my morning bowl of white food and a view of the ferny glade, followed by talk-talk-talk and static. Next there was being strapped to the slab and a short slide into the tunnel, where my fragile, precious memories of first love were erased.
Then the showers. Well, the showers were two high-powered hoses held on me while I screamed. I never even saw the people who held them.

Finally, another injection, and I was dropped into dreamless sleep.

And that’s not even the worst part. Are you ready for the real confession? After days of this dehumanizing routine, I gave up. I gave in.

Does that surprise you? It surprises and embarrasses me. But as soon as I submitted to Dr. Narmond and cooperated with the treatment, my days at Fern Haven got easier. Bruises healed. My mind calmed. And finally, I was released by Dr. Narmond, who pronounced me
well
.

“You’re going to be much happier now, Tandoori. If you ever feel anxious, think of the cool green glade at Fern Haven.”

Right.

When I returned home, I was basically a zombie. And I had no memory of James or of why I’d really been sent to Fern Haven. I hadn’t a single clue as to what had happened to me. So my parents came up with a story.

Malcolm and Maud sat me down and told me that I’d been stressed out, actually on the verge of a breakdown, but it had been forestalled, thank God, because they’d rescued me in time.

Then Dr. Keyes was brought in to reinforce my treatment.

“FOF, Tandy. Focus on the facts.”

I went back to school and told the story I now believed. I’d been to a health spa for a couple of weeks. I’d needed the rest. I picked up right where I’d left off, before James, because I didn’t remember that James existed.

I got As in school, and since I really had no friends, there weren’t too many people clamoring to ask me questions. My daily coaching sessions with Dr. Keyes were going well, at least according to my parents, and I continued to take my special concoction of “vitamins” every morning. Vitamins that I now know had been altered while I was away to help keep any residual memories tamped down—to help keep me under Dr. Keyes’s and Malcolm’s and Maud’s control.